DeeAlsh13 Posted October 10, 2015 #1 Share Posted October 10, 2015 (edited) Hi everyone! I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports! I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary: Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden Day 3: Helsinki, Finland Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?) Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia Day 8: Riga, Latvia Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania Day 10: At sea Day 11: Berlin, Germany Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance! Edited October 10, 2015 by DeeAlsh13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulxyz2004 Posted October 10, 2015 #2 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Hi everyone! I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports! I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary: Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden Day 3: Helsinki, Finland Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?) Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia Day 8: Riga, Latvia Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania Day 10: At sea Day 11: Berlin, Germany Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance! Stockholm: -Gamla Stan -Vasa Museum -Don´t miss the sailaway and the next few hours Helsinki: -Rock church -Market Hall and open air fish market St. Petersburg: -Peterhof, especially outside fountain garden -Catherines Palace with amber room -Hermitage -Tour around City sights -I highly recommend to skip ship tours and look for a small Group private excursion that customize your days there -Best excursion I ever had there was a two day tour with a private car, Driver and tour guide for just the two of us. It was absolutely customized and we stopped at places we couldn´t go with a big Group and no stop was a big loss of time with waiting for everyone was ready and on the bus again. We jst stayed as Long as we needed. Tallin: Best part of it is the old medival town. No Need for tours IMO. It´s most easy to get there form port and walk around. Berlin: Be Aware you are not Docking in Berlin, as it´s nowhere Close to the sea. You will be most likely Docking in Warnemünde and it´s a several hour trip one way to Berlin. I would not visit Berlin on a cruise. Copenhagen: -Again a City that is very walkable. HOHO tours are offered ashore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeAlsh13 Posted October 10, 2015 Author #3 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places! Berlin: Be Aware you are not Docking in Berlin, as it´s nowhere Close to the sea. You will be most likely Docking in Warnemünde and it´s a several hour trip one way to Berlin. I would not visit Berlin on a cruise. As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWOL Posted October 10, 2015 #4 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places! As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there? For sure try to do a Berlin tour. The bus ride to town is interesting and is about one hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulxyz2004 Posted October 10, 2015 #5 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Thanks for all the tips! I'll check out all those places! As for Berlin, the RCI site says Rostock is where we will be stopping, with "easy access" to Berlin and a couple other German cities, Do you still not recommend visiting if we were docking there? Warnemünde is the Harbor of Rostock;) Access to Berlin is probably easy as the cruiselines usually will set up Special Trains into Berlin, but it´s still a several hour trip each way. I would think around 3 hours one way, so your Berlin trip would be 6 hours just travelling to and from. I´m not saying Berlin isn´t worth visiting, but IMO it´s just too far from the sea to do so with a cruise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeAlsh13 Posted October 10, 2015 Author #6 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phillygirl2400 Posted October 10, 2015 #7 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Regarding the SP Ballet, check to see if they are away on tour during July. We booked our multi-city excursions with SPB tours. Highly rated on tripadvisor. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruizers Posted October 10, 2015 #8 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Hi everyone! I'm currently checking out the Ultimate Scandinavia-Russia 13 night cruise on the beautiful Serenade of the Seas for July of next year, and since this is a completely new trip for me, I thought to ask about excursions to these beautiful ports! I'm looking for absolute must-sees and don't want to miss anything big! This is the itinerary: Day 1-2: Stockholm, Sweden Day 3: Helsinki, Finland Day 4-6: St. Petersburg, Russia (I know I want to see the St.P Ballet one day, but what about the other two? suggestions?) Day 7: Tallinn, Estonia Day 8: Riga, Latvia Day 9: Klaipeda, Lithuania Day 10: At sea Day 11: Berlin, Germany Day 12: Fredericia, Denmark Day 13-14: Copenhagen, Denmark I'd love to hear about your experiences! Thanks in advance! We just completed a similar cruise. In St. Petersburg, I would highly recommend using SPB tours. We toured with them for two days, and I feel as though we missed nothing! They are prompt, knowledgeable and extremely well organized. i would not hesitate to use them again. Each of the sites you would like to see are part of their tours. The buses each hold about 18 people maximum making the small group easy to navigate in some of the crowded sites. As for Tallinn, we found (through TripAdvisor) a free walking tour. It was fabulous! The guide(s) are starting their own company and want groups to be small (no more than 12) in order to give individualized attention. The tour was about three hours and I believe we saw everything there is to see! Again, the guide was extremely knowledgeable and extremely well organized. We tipped the amount we would have paid if it were a trip offered by the cruise line. Well worth every cent! Have a fantastic trip! Caren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulxyz2004 Posted October 10, 2015 #9 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference! Warnemünde/Rostock to Berlin is about 3 hours one way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeAlsh13 Posted October 10, 2015 Author #10 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Regarding the SP Ballet, check to see if they are away on tour during July.We booked our multi-city excursions with SPB tours. Highly rated on tripadvisor. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk From what I understand online, there is a Ballet and Opera festival running May through August of 2016, so I'll be okay with watching that if the official Saint Petersburg Ballet is away on tour! haha And I'll check out SPB tours right now! thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeAlsh13 Posted October 10, 2015 Author #11 Share Posted October 10, 2015 As for Tallinn, we found (through TripAdvisor) a free walking tour. It was fabulous! The guide(s) are starting their own company and want groups to be small (no more than 12) in order to give individualized attention. The tour was about three hours and I believe we saw everything there is to see! Again, the guide was extremely knowledgeable and extremely well organized. We tipped the amount we would have paid if it were a trip offered by the cruise line. Well worth every cent! Have a fantastic trip! Caren Thanks for the info on St. Petersburg! Also, do you have the name of this walking tour so I can search for them? Thanks in advance x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negc Posted October 10, 2015 #12 Share Posted October 10, 2015 We used ALLA for our tours on our Baltic cruise two years ago and found them very good and their multi-city comfort tour was quite reasonable, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruizers Posted October 11, 2015 #13 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Thanks for the info on St. Petersburg! Also, do you have the name of this walking tour so I can search for them? Thanks in advance x Yes! I just remember the name - - Saku Travel in Tallinn! Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruizers Posted October 11, 2015 #14 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Yes! I just remember the name - - Saku Travel in Tallinn! Enjoy! You can look them up (with all of the reviews) at tripadvisor.com. Maarja was our incredible guide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oak Hill Cruisers Posted October 11, 2015 #15 Share Posted October 11, 2015 When we were in St. Petersburg on the Brilliance a couple of years ago, we used DenRus (sp?) for our tours. No problems. We did the folkloric dance tour with them one evening. We had our own intermission snack & drink table. From viewing the stateroom TV replay of the on-board folkloric dance troupe, it looked like it was just about as good as the one we saw in St. Perterburg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diplomacy Posted October 11, 2015 #16 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Wait, so is it a 3 hour drive or a 1 hour drive into town? cause that's a huge difference! 2 1/4 by car 3 1/4 by train Times according to google maps ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelayne Posted October 11, 2015 #17 Share Posted October 11, 2015 We did a 2 day tour in Saint Petersburg with Anastasia Tours which I believe is now part of SPB tours. There were 4 of us and we chose to pay a few $ more for a private tour rather than the groups of 16 or so. It was great, we moved quickly, we able to modify the tour from the standard tour and thanks to a wonderful guide and driver got a bit off the tourist run to see how/where they lived. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dupe1_Risteilijä Posted October 11, 2015 #18 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Helsinki: Suomenlinna and with kids Linnanmäki amusement park. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TeeRick Posted October 11, 2015 #19 Share Posted October 11, 2015 We just completed a similar cruise on the Brilliance in July of this year. We took mostly ship excursions in the ports other than St Petersburg where we used Alla Tours and we took the 2-day Comfort Tour. It was superb! If you go to TripAdvisor you will get lots of reviews and information. Alla and SPB tours are both highly rated. You can't go wrong with either of them. If we did it again we would actually book all port excursions with Alla or SPB and not take ship excursions which are slow and crowded. Both of these companies give a multi-port discount. Alla offers an evening excursion to the Ballet or to the Faberge Museum. We would not spend the money to tour Tallinn Estonia. It is easy enough to walk to and around Old Town on your own. It is a truly beautiful old city. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigbound Posted October 11, 2015 #20 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Helsinki: Suomenlinna and with kids Linnanmäki amusement park. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Suomenlinna has wonderful spots to picnic on and Cafe Samovarbar had tasty treats and coffee drinks to relax with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigbound Posted October 11, 2015 #21 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Stockholm- Vasa Museum Copenhagen- Tivoli Gardens Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibfishing2 Posted October 12, 2015 #22 Share Posted October 12, 2015 We did a 2 day tour in Saint Petersburg with Anastasia Tours which I believe is now part of SPB tours. There were 4 of us and we chose to pay a few $ more for a private tour rather than the groups of 16 or so. It was great, we moved quickly, we able to modify the tour from the standard tour and thanks to a wonderful guide and driver got a bit off the tourist run to see how/where they lived. I saw that you were considering a tour with Blue Mountains in Sydney. I have questions. Please email me at "ibfishingifish2@gmail.com" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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